


Jennifer and The Deliciously Not-Boring Day

by OrchardsinSnow



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e09 The Serpent, Fan Characters, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Nobody is Dead, Other, Some Humor, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrchardsinSnow/pseuds/OrchardsinSnow
Summary: Quentin confuses ice-cave-climbing with knitting. The monster attends a cosplay convention. Margo has weird ideas about birthday party entertainment.And: real-life superfans of The Magicians accidentally save everyone.





	Jennifer and The Deliciously Not-Boring Day

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me after seeing the Eliot-Monster watching arctic climbers on TV using ice axes, and wondering if he subconsciously knew and was thrilled by the idea that ice axes could harm him. The story took a few turns from there, veering into fiction-meets-reality territory. 
> 
> Nothing dire, but out of an abundance of caution, some warnings: The Eliot-Monster touches Quentin in a non-sexual but non-consensual way and later licks a cosplayer non-sexually without securing consent (and is called out for it).

Boring.

Everything was so boring.

Feeling the gnaw in its stomach, and having to chew and swallow non-alive things to make it stop: tediously boring.

Drinking anything that didn’t have a papery sticker sealing the bottle: boring.

Quentin staring at books all day, reading words silently without even making it a story: boring.

Sometimes the Eliot body wanted to pet the hair of Quentin while the silent reading was happening so it let the body do that but then the Eliot body didn’t want to anymore, when Quentin made a flat line with Quentin’s lips and said don’t. _Don’t_ was very boring.

Julia: boring.

Percy: useful that one time when he showed the altar and the bowls and the stones and the girl and how to summon Enyalius, but mostly boring.

There was something that was not boring. Something recent. It remembered. It practiced remembering. A stirring in the tailbone. A shrink-up feeling in the stupid boring dangling skin-bag of balls where human bodies felt early fear. Oh: the not-boring thing was the glowing box on the countertop inside of which humans in black outfits and black masks attacked a snow boulder with killing axes.

It found the glowing box again. Why did it think this axe was called a killing axe? The axe was called an ice axe. Yet when it saw the axe being heaved into a crevice of ice to make a bigger crevice, when it saw the axe lodged in the rock-solid ice so tight and firm, it felt that stirring feeling and that shrink-up feeling so delicious and. Not boring.

More of this.

#

Quentin pulled Margo aside in the loft’s living room.

“He likes—he likes this ice climbing show?” Quentin said. “I mean he seems to really like it. Is there a stream that shows ice climbing on a 24/7 loop? Something Icelandic maybe?”

“You’re thinking of knitting.” Margo had her hand on her hip and she seemed very certain.

“I don’t think I am.”

“It’s Norwegian, not Icelandic, and they show nonstop knitting. It’s called hygge.”

“Okay—well—um. I don’t. I don’t think knitting will keep him riveted.”

Margo turned to look at the monster over her shoulder. The monster was holding the countertop TV set upside down and shaking it the way he’d shaken the cereal box the previous day, as if hoping to coax some last remaining dregs of content out of it.

While Margo and Quentin watched, the monster let the TV crash down onto the countertop, sending shards of glass and plastic flying. “This box is empty.”

#

Quentin managed to find a spare laptop and while he couldn’t find any ice climbing channels, he set it to autoplay a long series of episodes of The Amazing Race on YouTube. The monster just wandered away.

“Does. Does it make you remember something? The ice climbing? Maybe it’s a clue. Maybe Enyalius is in an ice cave.”

Faster than Quentin could even process what was happening, the monster was cupping Quentin’s balls. Sort of—gently, non-sexually. Quentin hoped.

“It makes me feel the shrink-up feeling here,” the monster said, eyebrows furrowed. “Humans feel that sometimes, right? Humans who have this part.”

“Well, _all_ humans kind of—Uh. Yep. We do. I’m familiar with it.” Quentin’s voice came out breathy and high-pitched.

“It’s not boring,” the monster said. “Do humans sometimes feel it on purpose?”

“I—I don’t want to feel it on purpose . . . right now.”

“Oh, I know you don’t want to Quentin, you only want boring things.” The monster laughed and released him, a new thought distracting his attention. He gazed into the middle distance. “I’ll be back.” And vanished.

Quentin let out a breath.

Margo folded her arms across her chest. “What the actual fuck? I was wringing my memory like I wanted to murder Sponge Bob for a castration-reversal spell. Jesus, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Quentin squeaked. “I think he actually just revealed that he’s scared of something.”

Margo fixed her gaze on the remains of the countertop TV.

“Wait a minute. I haven’t given you the recap, but last week on Real Housewives of Fillory, Josh dropped some intel about a magical battle axe I’m about to go lay my hands on that can expel possession. Do you think the monster somehow knows an axe like that can hurt him?”

“It’s not just that, though—he said something about wanting to feel it on purpose.”

“He’s been super bored. Think he’s bored enough to want to scare himself?”

Quentin shrugged. “You don’t even have to be that bored to want to scare yourself. Look at how the horror genre is so massively profitable, more so even than fantasy, on an aggregate basis—”

“Okay, don’t make me sorry I asked.” Margo said, rolling her eye. Eyes. Her eye and a fairy’s eye. Whatever. “But—huh. I have an idea.”

#

The monster gazed into the convention center hall. Crowding beneath a banner marked _Fan Con Mid-Atlantic 2019_ were humans wearing weak plastic augmentations to their weak bodies and with colorful pastes like what Quentin called frosting applied to their juicy faces. Quentin didn’t like to have frosting licked from his juicy face but maybe these humans did.

The monster could smell the difference between humans who were feeling early, shrink-up fear on purpose, and humans who were feeling too-much, too-late fear. Too-much, too-late fear humans were useless. They said tedious words repetitively and made annoying noises. Fear on-purpose humans, though. They would play.

And if enough fear-feeling people were here, Enyalius might come. Enyalius had come to the altar with the bowls and the stones because of the tortured girl. Enyalius liked fear, too. Other people’s fear.

#

The next time Quentin saw Margo she looked dehydrated, exhausted, bronzed by multiple suns, and triumphant. Extra triumphant. She was also toting two bad-ass shiny black axes that radiated magic, quotas be damned.

“What are those, obsidian?”

“Obsidian is volcanic in origin. Basic. These bitches are the product of pure womanly willpower and rage.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Quentin opened his palms. “So. What now?”

#

In the throng of plastic and paste-covered humans the monster saw a t-shirt that it liked that said _All Brunches Matter_ , with a drawing of pancakes with syrup. The t-shirt was inside a baggy black cardigan like his, and inside the t-shirt was a human.

“Will you play with me?” the monster said to Brunches. The early fear smell sprang forth from Brunches, but then it faded to a trickle. The human inside the t-shirt said words, words that didn’t match the early fear smell. Very much like Quentin, and the monster liked that.

“Ha! That’s my line! Awesome cosplay, man. Great detail.” Brunches smiled, showing a row of straight and pearly teeth. Brunches touched the monster’s forearm, touched his black cardigan to the monster’s black cardigan. His hand felt warm. Not like Quentin, who trembled and cringed. “What are you using in the hair, just gel? Maybe a little wax? Come here, guys. Look who it is.”

The monster blinked the Eliot body’s eyes. “Do you . . . know me?”

“So in character! Of course! You nailed it, so yeah.”

“My name.”

“You’re Jennifer.” Brunches slapped the Eliot body’s back and looped his arm around. “Let’s get some pics.”

“Jennifer.” It put the Eliot body’s hands to its own chest. The body’s heart was beating, not in an early-fear way. It touched the Eliot body’s fingers to its own cheek.

Brunches reached out a hand to pull the elbow of a person who was wearing a plain t-shirt like Quentin’s and a scratchy jacket not like Quentin’s and a leather pouch for holding things like Quentin’s and a stretchy hat not like Quentin’s. “Here’s who you really want to play with . . . Quentin! No, Brian! Bri-guy is here!”

“Jennifer!” this new human shouted, smiling. Not like Quentin. “Oh, man. Too real. Eliot is gonna be pissed about what you’ve done to his hair.”

A crowd of humans was gathering and they were all looking at him. They were all _looking_ at him, not even at the Eliot body but at _him_ , in the eyes—so much attention—and he didn’t even have to use the Eliot body's fingers to pinch the jaw.

“Eliot. Eliot is boring.” The crowd made a noise at that, opening their mouths wide and clutching their tummies. Quentin never made this noise. Julia never made this noise.

Not-Quentin giggled. “Why should I care? I’ve never met Eliot! I’m Bri-guy, remember?”

The monster felt a sort of stunned relief. _Finally._ “You don’t care about Eliot. You care about Jennifer.” Not-Quentin didn’t jerk his arm away when the monster encircled it with the Eliot body’s long fingers. Not-Quentin went soft against him and rested a hand comfortably on the Eliot body’s shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze.

The monster was feeling—something. Something more than it had felt before. It was the top feeling, the most feeling. At least until that feeling was knocked out of place by a new best feeling when Not-Quentin said: “Sure, why not. I love it. I love _you_.”

#

Penny appeared in the middle of the loft. He frowned at Margo’s ice axes, then shook his head. “Some serious vibes coming off of those things, whoa. But before I even open that door: I just read a really weird book at the library. You guys are not gonna believe this.”

#

The crowd was getting bigger.

Brunches was complaining. “Guys, Jennifer and the fairy queen never even overlapped, not in any timeline.”

A tall powdery person with creamy hair and no eyebrows draped an arm across Jennifer’s shoulder. Or layered it atop Not-Quentin’s arm, which had not moved from Jennifer’s shoulder. Jennifer licked the frosting that coated the fairy queen’s juicy face. Chalky.

“Dude—too real. Code of conduct much?” The chalky fairy pushed herself away from Jennifer and stalked off toward a booth labeled _security_.

Not-Quentin who loved the monster—who loved _Jennifer_ —said, “Don’t get carried away, now, Jen. If the spirit moves you to lick, you can lick me.”

Jennifer did.

Jennifer became aware that a hush fell over the crowd. Did it lick too hard again? But—no. Not-Quentin was smiling. Alive. Not even a little bit of juice coming out. When Jennifer raised the Eliot body’s head, it saw everyone was looking elsewhere.

At Quentin. And Percy and Julia. And Margo, who was carrying two of the killing axes that had made him feel so shrink-up tingly and delicious.

“Quentin! Did you find Enyalius? That’s why I came here too. To get the rest of my—Oh, but—” The monster looked at Not-Quentin. “That was before I found out my name. Bri . . . Brian helped me remember. And—that guy.” He pointed at Brunches. “I’m Jennifer.”

The monster frowned. Eliot’s voice was coming out in a squeezed way, almost croaking. The Eliot body’s throat felt thick, like something small was caught there.

Margo nodded slowly. “It’s . . . your surprise birthday party. Jennifer. All for you.”

“Did you come to play?”

Margo nodded again. “Mmm hmm. I brought these for us to play with, because you showed Quentin how it’s fun to feel scared on purpose. I can make it tickle a little, how would that be?”

“That . . . that one does tickle. It makes me feel . . . not inside a body for a minute.” Real Quentin and Julia and Percy were looking all around, everywhere but at the Eliot body. They were never going to come around. Not like these new friends. The stirring in the Eliot body’s belly for the tickle of the axes was stronger now. It could choose—Jennifer could choose. Jennifer could maybe even forget about Enyalius.

“You can be not inside a body for a minute. Won’t that feel less boring? We just want Eliot back.” Margo said. She pointed with her chin toward Brunches. “What about this guy, in the probably ironic but still not appropriate-for-2019 t-shirt? He looks like he deserves it.”

Jennifer looked at Brunches, then at Not-Quentin. “When that body is my new body, I’m still Jennifer, okay? Don’t call me his name. Promise?”

Not-Quentin was turning pale, all the juice going someplace other than the face. Not-Quentin nodded and backed a few inches away. Best to avoid splatters.

“Okay,” Jennifer said, using Eliot’s voice for the last time. It looked at Margo, opened its arms wide. “Okay.”

#

When it was over, Julia jamming the stopper into the enchanted bottle she’d had hidden in her skirts, Brunches panting and clutching his chest in relief, hedge witches dispersed throughout the crowd casting furiously to bind the bottle, a single low, miserable moan rang out across the room.

Margo and Quentin flanked Eliot, kneeling, each of them holding one of his hands while Penny read the mind of a trauma surgeon in the crowd and stitched up the tiny cut under Eliot’s armpit. Margo had been a bit literal about the tickling. They both bent closer to witness Eliot’s deep-seated pain, to comfort and ease him.

“Bambi. Quentin,” he panted “I—I—Oh, God. Bambi, if you love me at all, you’ll use that axe to cut these disgusting clothes off of me this minute. Q, if you—no, I know that you do. Kiss me, if you can stand it. Kiss me.” And there were no more words for a long time. Only the rush of blood in Eliot’s ears, which were his own ears once again, and the pounding of Eliot’s heart, which was as much his own as it had ever been, and the sound of cosplayers gently applauding from a respectful distance. 

 

THE END


End file.
